Monday, March 30, 2009

Unexpectedly available

Well my day has not gone to schedule (see twitter update on side bar) so I am unexpectedly home which is actually a major treat for 10.30am on a Monday morning.

Downside though is that it does put me badly behind with my project at work. A couple of final decisions were due to be made today so I could be prepared for project kick off on 1 April…the best laid plans and all that. I have renegotiated the start date to Monday 6th and have booked couple of crucial meetings for tomorrow via video conference instead – I hate video conferencing,. I feel super self conscious. I am alone at my end usually so I try and sit as far away from the camera as I can. Sometimes I also forget that I am ‘sitting’ at the head of the big conference table at head office (enormous flat screen LCD on their wall) and I start sending sneaky texts or day dreaming, very embarrassing when I realise that everyone is staring at me.

Anyway that’s boring shit and not in fact, what my post is about at all…

Whilst I buggered around this morning trying to get on another flight (well actually when I was sitting having coffee and updating twitter after getting too pissed off with the whole process) I heard two women talking about the seal photo on the Whitehouse website. Now I have never even looked at Whitehouse.gov but I just checked out it and there really is a seal photo taken in NZ in yesterdays blog (so I promptly nicked the pic to put here naturally). Sleeping in sun. Cute. But again I digress…

The primary point of today's post is actually about something I heard on the car radio as I drove home from the airport.

Warning: read on only if you are brave. Do not interpret this to say that I am fan, let alone a member of PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) because I am not. I do strongly agree that animals should not be mistreated (though I am a carnivore and leather shoe/belt/bag lover) but I don’t buy into PETA’s violent brand of radicalism, not by a million miles!

Well, Ingrid Newkirk is the woman who started PETA and she has today published her last will and testament on the PETA website. I am not going to publish the whole thing here as anyone who is interested will click on the link and investigate themselves but here is the gist of it:

d) That one of my eyes be removed, mounted, and delivered to the administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as a reminder that PETA will continue to be watching the agency until it stops poisoning and torturing animals in useless and cruel experiments; that the other is to be used as PETA sees fit;

f) That my liver be vacuum-packed and shipped, in whole or in part, to France, to there be used in a public appeal to persuade shoppers not to support the vile practice of force-feeding geese and ducks for foie gras;

et cetera, et cetera ad nauseum.

Gruesome to the max but I do have to reluctantly admit that this is a woman who is PASSIONATELY committed to her cause. I give grudging kudos to her for that. That will takes guts.

3 comments:

I suppose you have to give it to her for her passion; not many folks have that quality about things these days. It's like a lot of sheep walking around.I am not a Peta-ite, but I do agree with many of their policies regarding animal testing and so on. I am also a carnivore; wear a leather belt, etc.But I am completely against the maltreatment of animals.

I could go on for hours about this subject. Leather doesn't come from an animal simply killed for the skin, like elephants for ivory, tigers for a rug etc. It's like medical testing on animals, a lot of humans do it, voluntarily, animals don't get that choice, but if I were ill and needed the medicine would I take it? It's a tough one.